Re: Rock Lake Legends, Myths and Mysteries...

dauntless89 wrote:The largest known White Sturgeon was over 20ft long, and they're very well known to exist in the Columbia and Snake river systems. IMO, it's entirely conceivable that a breeding population of them could have become landlocked in what is now Rock Lake (or any other larger inland lake) in the last 20,000 years or so, possibly as a result of the glacial floods that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

Once landlocked, they would have no natural predators, and the depths of a lake like Rock would afford them the ability to grow very old and large.

Or, maybe these Sturgeon were transplanted from the Columbia river..

MM

It sounds like you've thought this all out pretty well. Are you sure you didn't have something to do with this "transplant?" Wait for it... I smell something fishy going on here! (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

dauntless89 wrote:The largest known White Sturgeon was over 20ft long, and they're very well known to exist in the Columbia and Snake river systems. IMO, it's entirely conceivable that a breeding population of them could have become landlocked in what is now Rock Lake (or any other larger inland lake) in the last 20,000 years or so, possibly as a result of the glacial floods that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

Once landlocked, they would have no natural predators, and the depths of a lake like Rock would afford them the ability to grow very old and large.

Or, maybe these Sturgeon were transplanted from the Columbia river..

MM

It sounds like you've thought this all out pretty well. Are you sure you didn't have something to do with this "transplant?" Wait for it... I smell something fishy going on here! (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!

You either walk inside your story and own it...or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.

When they poisoned Sprague Lake the first time (around 1987) They did recover a Sturgeon in the neighborhood of 5-6 feet in length. An older gentleman that I knew from Sprague claimed that his brother caught it on the Columbia in the late 1930's and transplanted it.

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Airon wrote:I have heard the one about a train wreck. No details about cars or anything, just that a train derailed and went into the lake.

I have seen with my own eyes a fish surface for a few seconds that probably measured two feet from dorsal fin to tail fin (couldn't see the head). This was at the other end where the stream feeds the lake.

I have also been out there where fog formed out of nowhere that was so thick it took me an hour and a half to make it back to the launch from the other end.

Just have to say great topic! I think we've covered almost all of them.

Had a similar weather experience. March morning, weather was great fishing in a t-shirt.. Look down the lake and see clouds at the surface of the water, rolling up towards us. Completely blanketed everything and tempurature must have dropped 25 degrees in 5 minutes. Was very glad to get off the water on that one.

Had a farmer tell me he and his wife were swimming down below where the crick dumps out, and something bumped his leg, spooked him and he got out of the water. Wife said he was white as a ghost and he developed a wicked rash on that leg. This guy was an older honest gentleman that had no reason to tell a story like this. I will say that everyone I've talked with about Rock has a high level of respect for the water. It definitely has a supernatural aura to it. I always feel great about leaving there with all folks that I went with, and everyone is ok. I love that lake, but one must respect that body of water.

I've seen some weird things water-wise in that lake.. Couldn't say RL monster though, but things I could not explain.

jimmy wrote:I have fished Rock lake since I was a kid, know the lake very well. Also know a family that has lost 3 relatives out there by drowning on different occasions. I came very close once, long story.. If you don't know the lake very well, I advise not taking a boat on it without someone that has experience. I have heard about the train and most of the other ones. I have also heard of drownings and bodies popping up in a different lake.I do know of a spot in the middle of the lake where it is over 300 ft. deep but yet I was standing on a rock that was 2 ft. under the surface, (I was in a float tube).The fishing is great but be careful, the wind can pick up and its a ocean!

I would be happy enough hooking one of those monster brown trout that are supposed to be there. I think about it every once in awhile but with all the stories of boating accidents I've heard I figure I need to find someone who knows the lake well first.As to the possible model T's underwater, if they exist and its possible to get to them I wonder what the salvage laws are. Anyone own a personal submarine that can tow a car?

all I know is there are rock pillars that are just under the surface in a few spots. and also have heard the train and car story this lake can get every bit as ruff as the snake river on a windy day. And I have killed many geese and ducks on this lake just check the regs before you do the whole lake is not open to hunt well it used to not be not sure now a days

In 2004 my step-brother was involved with a informal sonar survey of Rock Lake that was conducted by a group called Interspace exploration.com. I was unsure of the details so I called them yesterday and spoke to one of the people who conducted the survey, one of several times they have been at this lake. They have used both towed and surface sonar as well as RPV's with cameras.The deepest spot they were able to find was 336', with most of the bottom no more than 328'. The lake has a mostly hard rock bottom that is covered by several feet of loose sediment which is easily stirred up. One of the things they did in the 2004 survey was to look specificly for the Milwaukee Road train cars which were supposed to have derailed and fell into the lake, taking with them the Model-T's. No trace of this wreck was ever found, and they scanned the entire south bank of the lake from the surface to the bottom. The largest piece of railroad equipment they ever found was a piece of a brake assembly.The lower portions are extremely cold, with average temps in the mid 30's. A couple of years ago they were called in to look for 2 boys who had vanished while fishing. They were able to locate and recover both bodies from 328' depth, and after 31 days of sumbergence. Due to the extemely cold temps and the extremely low oxygen levels at the bottom he reported that both bodies were perfectly preserved and looked like they had just fallen in that day. He told me that this lake will "turn over" frequently due to the wide temp variation from top to bottom as well as wind action. On one survey they recorded a surface temp change of 40 deg in a 20 minute period, dropping from mid 70's to mid 30s. This was in the summer and due to the bottom water rising up and bringing a lot of sediment with it, visibility dropped from 20' to zero when this happened.He has never heard of, or seen, any sturgeon in the lake, but he has seen pretty huge carp and I know the brown trout there can well exceed 10lbs. I hope this answers some questions.

Profanity is the crutch of the illiterate mind.

It is good to live in a depraved time, as one can appear virtuous at little cost.

Just remember......Theres no need to fear....Unnnderdog is here!!! Well, scrappy anyway.....

A number of years ago, I was bank fishing near the launch when a nice elderly gentleman drove up in his vehicle and broke into a discussion on the history of the region. He brought out a fascinating scrap book with period photos of the old hotel. He pointed to a flat bluff across the road as its location. Due to the railroad, the area was once booming and he pointed across the lake to the RR tracks location and yes, the major derailment. He was a fascinating individual and from others, I found I was not the first person to enjoy his local history knowledge .I wish I could remember more of the history lesson. I got the opinion that he had lived in the area all his life.

The legend of this wreck is interesting. My father moved here as a 10yo in 1942. He was facinated with railroads his entire life, esspecialy with the Milwaukee Road, which is the railroad that once occupied the south bank of Rock lake. Prior to his passing a few years back if one were to have gone into any of the model railroad shops in town and started asking for someone who would ba a good historian to have spoken to about the Milwaukee you would likely have been directed to him as much as to anyone. As with historians in any field, there are the real go-to guys, and he was considered by his peers to have been one of them.He had heard of this wreck, but was never able to find any written or photographic evidence of it, nor any direct witness to it. The collection of Milwaukee records (most taken from railroad facilities prior to their demolition, when the records would have been lost) that he and a few others here possessed would have likely shown it in the form of non or late arrivals, wreck train dispatches, etc. He was able to find the train, with arrival time, engineer's name, locomotive number, etc, of the train he and his family arrived on in 1942, just to give an example. He was never able to determine when this wreck occured. Some minor drailments, but not this big wreck.Now it is entierly possible that it happened prior to any of the dispatch/arrival records he and his friends ever accumulated, which admittedly are not 100% complete. But given that model-T production ended in 1927, and the railroad only had built through there in 1912, that leaves a farily narrow window for it to have occured in. Certainly by the late 70's or early 80's the list of anyone who could have seen it first hand had to have gone from few to begin with, to extremely few, so it is little wonder he never spoke to any railroad men who were there. Given his lack of evidence after decades of deliberate looking, and the underwater survey done of the entire south bank from surface to bottom by a team who were later able to find the bodies of two drowned children 328' down, that completely failed to find anything larger than a piece of a brake assembly, I have to doubt that it ever actualy occured. The railroad would have been unable to recover the wreckage if it were more than a short distance underwater. Given the steep angle of the underwater bank, which would have been condusive to everything heading down deep, and the depth of the lake, it would have made recovery nearly impossible. If the wreckage were not recovered then it would still be there. This survey team, which deliberately looked for this wreckage, would have found it, and yet found next to nothing.This is not to negate the memory of the gentleman you spoke to, but unless he were very old, it is likely something he heard from someone else who also heard it from someone else, etc. Can we say with 100% certainty that it never occured, no, but the hard evidence suggests that this myth is busted.

Profanity is the crutch of the illiterate mind.

It is good to live in a depraved time, as one can appear virtuous at little cost.

Just remember......Theres no need to fear....Unnnderdog is here!!! Well, scrappy anyway.....

Scrappy, everything I have ever found in regards to the alleged derailment fits exactly to your posting. The Colfax Gazette contacted the Milwaukee Road back in the 1970's to inquire about it and they had nothing on record whatsoever about any sort of catastrophic derailment along that stretch of line during their history of operation. I accept their findings, as an incident like that would have been a substantial loss of customer cargo and railroad property, more than likely producing a detailed financial paperwork trail and potentially an insurance one as well.

Having been familiar with this story for about as long as I can remember, as a kid whenever I would see one the Milwaukee trains run along the lake that tale was often one of the first things I thought of

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Without knowing first-hand a large amount about local lakebed composition and SONAR technology, I consider a possibility where the derailment did occur, but after 80-100 years the cars may have sank in silt to an undetectable level.

The father of one of my co-workers was big in the heavy equipment industry and ran a repair job shop over in Montana for most of his life. I heard through the co-worker a story about a section of road being constructed 30 or 40 years ago, where the construction crew got a large piece of equipment stuck in mud while prepping the road bed for paving. I can't remember the details, but it was a large heavy machine, perhaps a paver. They couldn't get it out and threw in the towel when it got dark. By the time they returned the next day, it had sank so far into the mud that the only thing above ground was the last 5 or 6 inches of the exhaust pipe. The contractor ended up just building the road over it because at that point, recovery and repair would have cost more than buying a replacement.

I don't know how consistent Rock Lake's bed composition is, or how far SONAR can penetrate. Silt could have also accumulated around the wreckage, burying it. This is a common phenomenon with shipwrecks. I'm talking out my ass with speculation at this point, but maybe something to think about.

America is at that awkward stage... It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

According to the man I spoke with at Interspace exploration.com the bottom is hard rock for the most part and covered by 6-8 feet of sediment. It was in this sediment they found the preserved bodies of the children. He told me such sediment has virtualy no effect on their equipment, as they were able to clearly read the bottom at every point. Having been in on jobs in this lake to recover bodies, vehicles (stolen cars ran into the lake), and other farm equipment lost in there, as well as similar jobs in other bodies of both fresh and salt water of every description and depth, he assured me there was virtualy no way a object the size of a railroad car would have escaped their detection. Just repeating what the man told me.

Profanity is the crutch of the illiterate mind.

It is good to live in a depraved time, as one can appear virtuous at little cost.

Just remember......Theres no need to fear....Unnnderdog is here!!! Well, scrappy anyway.....